Are we ready? Government-mandated plans could save lives in a disaster, but public rarely sees them

Mar. 8, 2013

A tank car sits on a railroad siding next to a propane facility in Green Bay on Feb. 25, 2013. / DOUG SCHNEIDER/Gannett Wisconsin Media

Brian Smith, Winnebago County 911 Center supervisor, dispatches officers to calls in the Com Center in November 2012. The second computer screen is the new 800 mHz trunking system that Winnebago County will be switching to after all testing is done. All police, fire and some municipalities will be switched to the new radio system. / JOE SIENKIEWICZ/OF THE NORTHWESTERN

On the web

Key elements

Some topics that may be addressed in your local emergency plan: • Where should I flee? Local emergency response plans may list the facilities that will serve as shelters. • How do I get there? Plans typically include maps showing routes to safe locations, and alternate routes in case some are impassible. Kewaunee County maps show routes to follow in an emergency at the area’s nuclear plants. • Who rescues me? Evacuating a school or nursing home isn’t much good if there is no one to transport the evacuees. The Manitowoc County plan spells out how bus drivers will be contacted in certain school evacuations. • What about my animals? Some plans address the question of what to do with pets and/or livestock during a long evacuation. — Doug Schneider/Gannett Wisconsin Media

Why plans matter

What would you do if your community experienced a major emergency, like a train derailment or a tornado? Where would you go for shelter? How would you get there if roads were blocked? To whom would you turn if you and your children did not have sufficient food or clothing in a disaster? Emergency response plans are designed to address such scenarios — before they occur — and the public has a right to know what’s in them. Several emergency management officials said the more that the public knows about such plans, the better the community is likely to do in recovering from a disaster. Here are some of the types of incidents in which parts of such plans can come into play. • In Door County, a natural gas leak and explosion in 2006 leveled a historic Ellison Bay store and killed a Michigan couple. • Near Fond du Lac, a 1996 tornado packing 200 mph winds tore through the village of Oakfield, destroying 60 homes, injuring at least 12 people and causing an estimated $40 million damage. • In Pulaski, Brown County, school students were sent home and two businesses were evacuated after a work crew ruptured a gas line in 2011. • In Sheboygan in January, emergency crews shut streets down after a tank leaked anhydrous ammonia, which can cause burns. • Near Wausau, three adults and more than 40 kindergartners were sickened by chlorine gas after a problem with a pump at a swimming pool in 2008. Also near Wausau, 23 people were treated after chlorine gas leaked from a paper mill in June 2008. • Near Eau Claire, about 60 people were evacuated and several taken to hospitals in December after a hydrochloric acid spill at a Turtle Lake business. — Doug Schneider/Gannett Wisconsin Media

Coming tomorrow

Much of your local emergency plan is supposed to be public, but some counties needed weeks or longer to make their plans available. See how your county responded.

Home owner Chad Hemenway , left, talks to his insurance agent while his sister Jennifer Allen looks skyward in the roofless living room of his damaged in Kaukauna, WI. on Sunday April 11, 2011. A large storm and reported tornado left a path of downed trees and destroyed homes on Sunday night. The Post-Crescent photo by Wm. Glasheen / The Post-Crescent

An unidentified worker stands in front of the Pioneer Store after an explosion early in the morning in Ellison Bay, Wis., Monday, July 10, 2006. Post-Crescent photo by M.P. King.

Oakfield tornado 1996

A Lakes Gas propane storage area on School Lane across from Southern Door schools February 28, 2013. Jim Matthews/Press-Gazette Media / Jim Matthews/Press-Gazette

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After a tornado devastated a small central Wisconsin city in 2011, it wasn’t a government agency that built the online bridge connecting victims of the devastation with neighbors who could help.

It was a Facebook page launched by an ordinary citizen that helped bring crews of people to clean up the yards and replace the clothing of neighbors who had been blasted by the 130 mph twister that leveled at least 22 homes and damaged dozens of others in Merrill, north of Wausau.

“People had lost everything, and it wasn’t like you could just ask public works to move some stuff — the government has too many hoops to jump through, too many requirements that say you have to have a board meeting before you can act,” said Mike Grunenwald, a longtime Merrill businessman. “We needed dozens, maybe hundreds, of people just to do some of the cleanup.”

Police, fire and public works crews focused on the most acute needs and local nonprofits did their part, Grunenwald said, but local agencies didn’t seem equipped to deal with the aftermath.

Citizens, meanwhile, had little idea what government agencies planned for cleanup and recovery. That’s because few Wisconsin counties put their emergency response plans online or in places where the public can see them, even though governments spend thousands of hours and thousands of tax dollars preparing the plans.

A Gannett Wisconsin Media audit of emergency preparedness and response plans for the state found that officials generally meet the legal minimum to notify the public that the plans exist, but many do little else to educate the public about the plans. And the bar is set low: The requirement states simply that counties publish a yearly notice that they have a plan, and keep the document at a county office.

The audit, and interviews with emergency-preparedness officials in more than a dozen Wisconsin counties, found:

• Any citizen with an Internet connection could read a plan posted on the Web, but few counties have put their plans on the Internet. Fond du Lac and Outagamie counties are among a handful of Wisconsin counties who put emergency plans online, but the vast majority of the 72 counties do not. (An overall plan from the state’s emergency management office also is online.)

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• Someone with access to a public library could review a plan at a library in his or her town, but a number of emergency management officials said they haven’t put the documents in local libraries.

• A taxpayer could learn about his county’s plan at a presentation about emergency preparedness, but officials say the time and budget needed to make such presentations are limited.

• Counties file their plans with the state, but the only emergency response plan on the Wisconsin Emergency Management system is statewide.

“It really wouldn’t be appropriate for the state to put a county plan up there,” said Lori Getter, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin Emergency Management. “It’s up to each county whether they want them (on their websites).”

Limited staffing

Citizens might not know that such emergency preparedness and response plans exist, and might not make the effort to find out.

Marinette County Emergency Management Director Eric Burmeister said no county resident has asked to see the county’s disaster plans, even after a 2010 incident in Marinette in which a classroom of high-schoolers was held hostage for hours by a student who later killed himself, or after a tornado struck the Wausaukee area in 2011.

“I’ve never had a request for it until you’ve asked,” he told a reporter in February. “The county administration gets a copy, the board chairman gets a copy, the agencies that have a role (in planning) get a copy. But what happens with those once we give them to those personnel, I don’t know.”

If an official must choose between training, planning or educating the public, Burmeister said, the other options come before public education.

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In some communities, the person in charge of emergency management is a part-time employee, or has other duties.

• Oconto County’s top emergency management official, Tim Magnin, has another job: Fire chief for the city of Oconto Falls.

• In larger Brown County, emergency management is the job of a two-man staff, but Director Cullen Peltier recently took on the added duties of acting 911 center director.

• In rural Florence County, David Gribble heads emergency management while also working as the chief sheriff’s deputy.

Such realities sparked concern from emergency management officials in several counties who said they aren’t able to spend as much time educating the public as they would like. One, Calumet County Emergency Management Director Matthew Marmor, said the public might assume that counties are better prepared than they actually are.

“There’s no such thing as part-time emergency management,” Marmor said. “Emergencies don’t only happen in a 20-hour week.”

He paused, then added: “Do we really need to have something bad happen for people to realize that?”

Impact of Bhopal

Laws governing local emergency planning were shaped by the 1984 disaster in which deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide India Ltd. plant in Bhopal, India, killing at least 3,700 people and injuring thousands more.

The U.S. government was determined to reduce the chance of a similar incident in this country, but also understands that chlorine, propane and other volatile substances must be manufactured, transported and put to use. Congress in 1986 mandated that communities create and maintain plans for action in cases of chemical or hazardous materials spills and deemed that such plans be accessible to the public.

“We’ve always done a good job educating and preparing people about the nuclear power plants,” said Lori Hucek, emergency management director in Kewaunee County for nearly 16 years. Residents receive regular communications about the plants, and the sites conduct regular emergency drills.

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The 1986 mandate, she said, is more about “the well with 400 gallons of chlorine on a site near the school.”

Wisconsin and many other states leave the planning duty to the counties. Today, most Wisconsin counties’ plans address a range of threats, from the train derailment and propane fire that forced the evacuation of the Waupaca County city of Weyauwega in 1996, to the 2009 fire that burned for days at the Patrick Cudahy Inc. meatpacking plant near Milwaukee.

Executed correctly, such plans can help school administrators keep students and teachers safe in an emergency. Nick Brylla, dean of students at Southern Door High School, said preparedness helped student and teachers avoid injury when a toxic gas was produced after someone mixed the wrong chemicals at the school where he once taught in western Wisconsin.

“If there’s ever a crisis, time is of the essence,” said Brylla, who is involved in emergency planning at Southern Door. “You need to have a coordinated response.”

The district — which is on property adjacent to a propane facility with several large tanks — has stepped up its work with organizations from public safety agencies to utilities, Superintendent Patti Vickman said.

“It’s huge in ensuring the safety of students, staff and faculty,” she said, “that we’re as prepared as possible.”